What, if anything, do you know about Mitchell's Plain?

Mitchell's Plain is a massive suburb -- or cluster of suburbs -- built in the 1970s/80s for Cape Town's coloured community, mainly for people who were removed from white suburbs and especially from the District 6 area at the edge of the city centre.

It's quite a distance from the city, I reckon about 35-40km. In the early '90s, there were 250,000 people living there, so that number will be higher now. It's mostly working class, and, like most working class coloured areas, it is in many parts infested with gangs. It is poor, but not in the way African townships are poor; so no corrugated iron and cardboard shacks, but houses of various sizes, and cheerless housing estates. The infrastructure is largely fair, with public transport, proper roads, electricity and so on. But due to gangsterism and drug addiction, it is generally not a safe place. Schooling is difficult there, with facilities being routinely robbed and vandalised.

Seeing as it is the size of a city, there are middle class areas as well, of course, and a few wealthy enclaves, though those who become wealthy usually move out of Mitchell's Plain as soon as they can.

If you're looking to buy a house there, I'd not recommend it.

Why are you interested in Mitchell's Plain.

Well you'll remember we were doing some pro-bono work for that charity that wants to bring kids from the Khayelitsha township to summer camps in Amsterdam.

Well, as a spin-off from that we were asked by a semi-famous Dutch bloke to do more free work for Run4Schools - www.Run4schools.nl They want amongst other things a complete marketing plan and website redesign

They are a charity that brings sports and games into two schools in Mitchell's Plain - eventually they hope to grow to five. They work closely with a South African charity called the JAG Foundation. They say the population of Mitchell's Plain is now 1.5 million,btw.

I've just finished translating their website into English and there was a line there that worried me. It said that while colored south africans once had a relatively priviliged position during the Apartheid era, since the ANC came to power they have fallen through the cracks - inferring that their situation was uniquely hopeless. So I was just wondering what your take on that p.o.v. was. Their description of the town is very different from yours, they portray the place as hell on earth.

So here's the thing, there are so many causes worthy of support in S.A. it's difficult to know where to start, and with the best will in the world it's impossible to support them all. We will do what we have committed to with Run4Schools but I'm worried we will lose focus on the Khayelitsha project - which my gut tells me is a more deserving project - though I know you had some doubts about it.

QUOTE:
It said that while colored south africans once had a relatively priviliged position during the Apartheid era, since the ANC came to power they have fallen through the cracks - inferring that their situation was uniquely hopeless. So I was just wondering what your take on that p.o.v. was. Their description of the town is very different from yours, they portray the place as hell on earth.

It is true that coloureds were oppressed under apartheid, but not as dreadfully as black Africans, and it is very true that they are disavantaged by the current form of social engineering. Mitchell's Plein is a product of the dispossession of coloured people by apartheid.

Mitchell's Plein is a shit place to live in by western standards. Think The Projects in the American ghettos, maybe, with social degeneration and poverty. It's not as bad as most of Khayelitsha. But it's not, generally, a nice place to be at all. And, absolutely, there is a sense of hopelessness among many.

The question of what area is more deserving must be measured against what benefits either option can return.

For cricketing purposes, it's fair top say that Mitchell's Plein has a more entrenched cricket culture than Khayelitsha.

"The question of what area is more deserving must be measured against what benefits either option can return."

Well yes.

It sounds terribly patronizing to talk of one project being more deserving of support than another. These are both being run by good people trying to make a real difference. I always have the nagging doubt that these projects ultimately simply support the staus quo - perhaps we would be better off supplying them with AK47s.

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"For cricketing purposes, it's fair top say that Mitchell's Plain has a more entrenched cricket culture than Khayelitsha."

The Khayelitsha project isn't really about cricket as such, it's about taking the best kids from Khayelitsha Cricket Club and taking them to a summer camp in Amsterdam. There they will receive cricket and life coaching - in the hope that they will become role-models for others in their community.

Run4Schools is just about giving kids something to do after school - keeping them off the streets. As you said in one of your earlier missives, poverty explains petty crime, but gangsterism is caused largely by boredom.

Yeah, it is, up to a point. I remember reading an interview in the late '80s or early '90s with a gangster from the coloured township of Manenberg (the place Dollar Brand couldn't spell), a real hell hole. Explaining why he belonged to a gang, he said something like: "On Saturday we have football, on Sunday church, but the rest of the week there's nothing to do."

But it's also about economics – why work as a driver like you Dad (who is lucky to have a job) and struggle financially when you can aspire to bling and expensive cars like the gang leaders. It's seen as a way out of poverty, even if reality suggests it probably isn't.

And then there is the question of self-preservation. If you belong to a gang, nobody in your territory fucks with you. If you don't, you will be fucked with wherever you go.

It seems your choice, if you have to make one, is beween providing leadership training and providing facilities for some social upliftment. For practical purposes, I'm not sure whether flying youngsters out to Amsterdam for leadership training would be any more efficient than holding a similar camp in the Western Cape somewhere.

I'll send you a Facebook link to a group which does good work on the grassroots level in the township through the us of sports.